Enterprise, Trade & Employment Micheál Martin has announced details of a €44.55m fund which will create 67 new research posts in higher education institutes.
The posts will be under the Science Foundation Ireland Stokes Professorship and Lectureship Programme.
The programme will support 32 professorships and 35 lectureships, and is aimed at recruiting 'senior, world-class research academics' as well as senior post-doctoral researchers.
Minister Martin said that, of the 32 Stokes Professorships awarded today, 30 were being allocated to scientists from outside Ireland. 'It substantially increases the recognition that Ireland is a location of choice for internationally competitive researchers,' he said.
SFI director general Professor Frank Gannon said the Stokes programme would allow more flexible recruiting by higher education institutes of key scientific and engineering researchers.
The Stokes Programme is named after Sir George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903), the Irish mathematician and physicist who was born in Skreen, Co Sligo.
